PENSACOLA, Fla. - Hurricane Sandy forced Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to shuffle his final-days campaign schedule, canceling three planned Virginia events and shifting his time to Ohio instead after a flyaround in Florida, where early voting kicked off Saturday.
The storm added an air of uncertainty to the closing days of the race for both campaigns, but Romney's campaign had not laid out a full list of events for the final week, and has instead been targeting events a few days out.
Instead of heading to a state where he's been neck-and-neck with President Barack Obama - Virginia - Romney will now go to Ohio and appear with vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, aides said.
The move was made out of "caution" so as not to distract emergency personnel working on the ground in Virginia and dealing with the storm, which is expected to wreak havoc on residents up and down the East Coast early next week, Romney spokesman Rick Gorka said.
The practical realities for both candidates is dealing with the storm in a careful way. But for Obama, he has the advantage of being able to visit storm-ravaged areas as president.
Romney's events will be rescheduled. But in every state, both candidates are running low on time to make their final cases.
"Our first concern is with the people that are in the path of the storm," Romney booster Sen. Marco Rubio told reporters traveling on the campaign plane through Florida, when asked about the impact of Sandy on the race.
"Obviously, that is No. 1 concern. That's the disruption we are most concerned about - is people's lives and well-being," he said. "Beyond that, I haven't had time to think about what impact it's going to have on the campaign. That's like a secondary concern at this point."
Romney did not discuss the pending storm during his first stop at a rally in Pensacola, where the stands at an ice rink were filled with a few thousand cheering supporters. He entered from the top of the stands, to the theme from the movie "Air Force One."
Romney didn't mention early voting, although all the speakers who were part of the warm-up act ahead of him did, urging people to call others and get them out.
But he did mention the military repeatedly in the forces-friendly area. And while he blasted President Obama's policies and the way he's run his campaign, he focused on bipartisanship, in a contrast to the scorched-earth criticisms of Rubio and Rep. Jeff Miller before the Republican nominee took the stage.
"In order for those things to happen, we've gotta to do something that doesn't happen very often in Washington," Romney said. "And that is Paul Ryan and I are going to have to do what we've done before. Which is reach across the aisle. We have to build bridges to people in the other party. We have to recognize [applause] this is not a time in America for us to pull back, and to divide and to demonize. It's a time in America for us to come together, to look for common ground, for places where we have agreement."
He argued that Ryan, whose Medicare plan has been the focus of a deluge of Democratic ads and mailers, had done that when he worked on that very plan.
Earlier, he said the president's "agenda keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller, not just for our military but for Medicare, for jobs. This is not a president who has been able to stand up to the challenge of the times."
Rubio had led the crowd in a chant of "10 more days," and Romney mentioned that.
"You know it's 10 more days because it matters to you," he said. "This election matters to the world, it matters to the country, but it matters to your family. And I hope you understand that this is an election about very big things like the big things that go on in your life."
For military families, there was this: "You may recall in our most recent debate I made the point that our Navy is now smaller than any time well, in almost a hundred years, and the president's response was, well, you know, we don't use bayonets and horses anymore. And, uh, in fact we do use bayonets, and a modern Navy is one of the critical elements that allows us to protect sea lanes and to keep the world more free and prosperous. I believe in a modern Navy."
The state, which is a key part of a Romney path to victory but less critical to Obama, has been deluged with campaign ads, mailers and visits from both sides. The Obama campaign has insisted its ground game, which is battle-tested, is going to out-gun the Romney campaign.
Obama's team has also increased its pushback on the Romney campaign line about its momentum as a fantasy in recent days, leery of letting it go unanswered - and mindful of the way George W. Bush used bravado to strong effect in the closing days of the 2000 race.
Rubio insisted to reporters that his team has "enthusiasm on our side. The best way to put it is in Florida I'd rather be us than them." He insisted there was still momentum in Florida, "and I see it every single day."
He conceded that he doesn't think anyone "wins Florida big." And he said it's on the campaign to make sure it gets its voters out.
"I think our challenge is the of any campaign down the stretch and that is to fully execute to make sure that people go vote," he said. "I mean, [if] someone that supports you but decides not to go vote because they get busy [it's] the campaign's fault for not doing a good enough job of getting them there. "
Earlier at the Pensacola event, Rubio blasted Obama for releasing a "picture book" that talked about a second-term agenda, sticking to the theme that the president doesn't have one.
Democrats seized on a remark he made about Obama espousing policies that drive people from other countries into the United States, but he told reporters later that he uses that line frequently and it's about big government, not places like Cuba.
Miller, for his part, made a reference to the Benghazi violence, a line of attack on Obama that Romney has basically dropped himself.
"America deserves a president that does not divide but unites this country. America deserves a president who understands its military and its weapons," he said, mentioning the four slain diplomats before the crowd drowned him out with chants of "USA! USA!"
"Mr. President, the phone rang and you didn't answer it," he said.



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